I think I must have fainted again. When I came to myself I was stiff all over, as if I had been lying on the floor for a long time. I both remembered and tried not to let myself quite remember what had happened. This lasted for maybe ten seconds. I was still alive, so I wasn't dead yet. If it wanted me awake and struggling, to continue to appear to be unconscious was a good idea. I lay facing the door the gang had left by; which meant that the cross-legged vampire was behind me.... Don't think about it.
I was up on my knees, halfway to my feet, and scrambling for the door before I finished thinking this, even though I knew you couldn't run away from a vampire. I had forgotten that I was chained to the wall. I hit the end of my chain and fell again. I cried out, as much from fear as pain. I lay sprawled where I struck, waiting for it to be over.
Nothing happened.
Again I thought, Please, gods and angels, let it be over.
Nothing happened.
Despairingly I sat up, hitched myself around to face what was behind me.
It was looking at me. He was looking at me.
The chandelier was set with candles, not electric bulbs, so the light it shed was softer and less definite. Even so he looked bad. His eyes (no: don't look in their eyes) were a knd of gray-green, like stagnant bog water, and his skin was the color of old mushrooms – the sort of mushrooms you find screwed up in a paper bag in the back of the fridge and try to decide if they're worth saving or if you should throw them out now and get it over with. His hair was black, but lank and dull. He would have been tall if he stood up. His shoulders were broad, and his hands and wrists, drooping over his knees, looked huge. He wore no shirt, and his feet, like mine, were bare. This seemed curiously indecent, that he should be half naked. I didn't like it.... Oh, right, I thought, good one. The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his mustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the track with the wrong kind of rope. There was a long angry weal across one of the vampire's forearms. Overall he looked... spidery. Predatory. Alien. Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape.
He was thin, thin to emaciated, the cheekbones and ribs looking like they were about to split the old-mushroom skin. It didn't matter. The still-burning vitality in that body was visible even to my eyes. He would be fine again once he'd had dinner.
* * *
How to tell a story – how to make it go on and on to fill the time – how to get interested in it yourself so it would be interesting to your listeners, or listener – all that came back to me, I think. It was impossible to know, and presumably vampires have different tastes in stories than little boys. I thought of a few car journeys we'd had on those holidays to the ocean, when I would tell stories till I was hoarse. There was a lot you could do with the story of Beauty and the Beast, and I had done most of it, and I did it again now. I watched the arc of the sun over my left shoulder. The light crept across the floor, and the vampire had to move to stay out of it. First he had to move in one direction, sliding along the floor as if all his joints pained him (how could he both look as if every movement were agony, and still retain that curious fluid agility?), and then he had to slide back again – back again and farther still, nearer to me. I moved to stay in the sun as he moved to stay out of it. I went on telling the story. There was no spot on the floor that he could have stayed in all day, and stayed out of the light. Vampires, according to myth and [certain experts], did something like sleep during the day, just as humans sleep at night. Do vampires need their sleep as we do? So it wasn't only food and freedom Bo was depriving this one of? He'd said it wasn't hunger that would break him. It was daylight.
I think I must have fainted again. When I came to myself I was stiff all over, as if I had been lying on the floor for a long time. I both remembered and tried not to let myself quite remember what had happened. This lasted for maybe ten seconds. I was still alive, so I wasn't dead yet. If it wanted me awake and struggling, to continue to appear to be unconscious was a good idea. I lay facing the door the gang had left by; which meant that the cross-legged vampire was behind me.... Don't think about it.
I was up on my knees, halfway to my feet, and scrambling for the door before I finished thinking this, even though I knew you couldn't run away from a vampire. I had forgotten that I was chained to the wall. I hit the end of my chain and fell again. I cried out, as much from fear as pain. I lay sprawled where I struck, waiting for it to be over.
Nothing happened.
Again I thought, Please, gods and angels, let it be over.
Nothing happened.
Despairingly I sat up, hitched myself around to face what was behind me.
It was looking at me. He was looking at me.
The chandelier was set with candles, not electric bulbs, so the light it shed was softer and less definite. Even so he looked bad. His eyes (no: don't look in their eyes) were a knd of gray-green, like stagnant bog water, and his skin was the color of old mushrooms – the sort of mushrooms you find screwed up in a paper bag in the back of the fridge and try to decide if they're worth saving or if you should throw them out now and get it over with. His hair was black, but lank and dull. He would have been tall if he stood up. His shoulders were broad, and his hands and wrists, drooping over his knees, looked huge. He wore no shirt, and his feet, like mine, were bare. This seemed curiously indecent, that he should be half naked. I didn't like it.... Oh, right, I thought, good one. The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his mustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the track with the wrong kind of rope. There was a long angry weal across one of the vampire's forearms. Overall he looked... spidery. Predatory. Alien. Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape.
He was thin, thin to emaciated, the cheekbones and ribs looking like they were about to split the old-mushroom skin. It didn't matter. The still-burning vitality in that body was visible even to my eyes. He would be fine again once he'd had dinner.
* * *
How to tell a story – how to make it go on and on to fill the time – how to get interested in it yourself so it would be interesting to your listeners, or listener – all that came back to me, I think. It was impossible to know, and presumably vampires have different tastes in stories than little boys. I thought of a few car journeys we'd had on those holidays to the ocean, when I would tell stories till I was hoarse. There was a lot you could do with the story of Beauty and the Beast, and I had done most of it, and I did it again now. I watched the arc of the sun over my left shoulder. The light crept across the floor, and the vampire had to move to stay out of it. First he had to move in one direction, sliding along the floor as if all his joints pained him (how could he both look as if every movement were agony, and still retain that curious fluid agility?), and then he had to slide back again – back again and farther still, nearer to me. I moved to stay in the sun as he moved to stay out of it. I went on telling the story. There was no spot on the floor that he could have stayed in all day, and stayed out of the light. Vampires, according to myth and [certain experts], did something like sleep during the day, just as humans sleep at night. Do vampires need their sleep as we do? So it wasn't only food and freedom Bo was depriving this one of?
He'd said it wasn't hunger that would break him. It was daylight.